Energy Secretary Chu faces a grilling on the Solyndra loan today from a hostile House committee.
"U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said it may take similar skills to navigate Washington politics as it does to make advances in physics research, a field in which he won a Nobel Prize in 1997.
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation [Wednesday]formally unveiled their joint proposal to set stronger fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards for model year 2017-2025 passenger cars and light trucks."
"BP, the biggest oil field operator on Alaska's North Slope, has failed to fix pervasive management and environmental safety problems and is a repeat environmental offender, federal prosecutors said in a new court filing this week."
"The European Union's trade authority plans to start an investigation into whether U.S. bioethanol exporters are receiving unfair state subsidies and selling their fuel to Europe at illegally low prices, diplomats said on Tuesday."
"Shell Oil, ExxonMobil and Morgan Stanley are among the major oil and financial companies potentially on the hook for millions of dollars in civil fines tied to fraudulent renewable fuel credits — and that could be the tip of the iceberg."
"A Coast Guard admiral who led the government's response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is taking over as the nation's chief overseer of offshore drilling safety, the Obama administration said Monday. Rear Adm. James Watson begins his post as director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on Dec. 1."
The bankruptcy of the solar firm Solyndra has focused a lot of attention -- some of it politicized -- on clean-energy subsidies. While those subsidies have sparked something of a "gold rush" among clean-energy entrepreneurs, some clean-energy startups face serious economic challenges that may justify them.
"A new and broader climate deal is out of reach for now and instead nations need to focus on how to replace the ailing Kyoto Protocol before 2020, Britain's minister of state for energy and climate change said on Monday."
"Oil and gas drillers who pollute groundwater, spill toxic chemicals or break other rules have little to fear from the inspectors and agencies regulating the surge in American petroleum production."
"Nebraska and TransCanada Corp reached a deal on Monday that will see the state pay for environmental studies on a new route for the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline that steers clear of the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region and the Ogallala aquifer."
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